Vol. I.
1891
[advertisement]
Each in three vols., Price
10s. 6d.
Charles Knight’s SHAKSPERE.
NAPIER’S history of the
peninsular war. With Maps and Plans.
LONGFELLOW’S works—Poems—Prose—Dante.
BOSWELL’S life of Johnson.
With Illustrations.
MOTLEY’S rise of the
Dutch Republic.
Byron’s poetical works.
When Richard Steele, in number 555 of his ‘Spectator’, signed its last
paper and named those who had most helped him
‘to keep up the spirit of so long
and approved a performance,’
he gave chief honour to one who had on his page, as
in his heart, no name but Friend. This was
’the gentleman of whose assistance
I formerly boasted in the Preface and concluding
Leaf of my ‘Tatlers’. I am indeed
much more proud of his long-continued Friendship,
than I should be of the fame of being thought the
author of any writings which he himself is capable
of producing. I remember when I finished the
‘Tender Husband’, I told him there was
nothing I so ardently wished, as that we might some
time or other publish a work, written by us both,
which should bear the name of the monument,
in Memory of our Friendship.’
Why he refers to such a wish, his next words show.
The seven volumes of the ‘Spectator’,
then complete, were to his mind The Monument, and of
the Friendship it commemorates he wrote,
’I heartily wish what I have done
here were as honorary to that sacred
name as learning, wit, and humanity render
those pieces which I have
taught the reader how to distinguish for
his.’
So wrote Steele; and the ‘Spectator’ will
bear witness how religiously his friendship was returned.
In number 453, when, paraphrasing David’s Hymn
on Gratitude, the ‘rising soul’ of Addison
surveyed the mercies of his God, was it not Steele
whom he felt near to him at the Mercy-seat as he wrote
Thy bounteous hand with worldly bliss
Has made my cup run o’er,
And in a kind and faithful Friend
Has doubled all my store?
The Spectator, Steele-and-Addison’s Spectator,
is a monument befitting the most memorable friendship
in our history. Steele was its projector, founder,
editor, and he was writer of that part of it which
took the widest grasp upon the hearts of men.
His sympathies were with all England. Defoe and
he, with eyes upon the future, were the truest leaders
of their time. It was the firm hand of his friend
Steele that helped Addison up to the place in literature
